The Flat Earth Society
Other Discussion Boards => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: Ghost of V on December 18, 2014, 11:08:21 PM
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http://bechdeltest.com
I just learned about this. I'm not sure if this is a well known thing or what. Apparently some people judge the quality of a movie based on this test. It seems highly inaccurate.
Here's some famous films that failed the test: the entire Star Wars original trilogy, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Pacific Rim, Avatar, every Pixar movie except A Bug's Life, Brave, The Incredibles, and Toy Story 3, and many many more.
Just wanted to see if anyone else knew about this and what they think about it.
For the record, I think it's fucking stupid.
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Uhh, it doesn't judge the quality of a movie, it's just something that points out that women in movies tend to be there just to add to the male characters and that movies don't really have well-written, well-developed female characters.
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Uhh, it doesn't judge the quality of a movie, it's just something that points out that women in movies tend to be there just to add to the male characters and that movies don't really have well-written, well-developed female characters.
That seems related to quality. Some people do judge the quality of a movie by this test. At least from a feminist perspective.
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øk
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It's a very well-known thing, although I've never heard of anyone judging the overall quality of a movie based solely on this. Anyway, it's not a bad place to start when looking at gender bias or feminist themes in film, although it's not perfect by any means, and there are too many exceptions to consider it a hard-and-fast rule. Pulp Fiction (just barely) passes it, Gravity fails it, etc.
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Uhh, it doesn't judge the quality of a movie, it's just something that points out that women in movies tend to be there just to add to the male characters and that movies don't really have well-written, well-developed female characters.
That seems related to quality. Some people do judge the quality of a movie by this test. At least from a feminist perspective.
Why wouldn't they?
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I'm not sure I understand the question, PP2.
Just watched Labyrinth and I'm pretty sure it fails the test.
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I don't think it does. The girl and her mother talk and they're not talking about a man.
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They're talking about dating and babysitting.
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They're talking about dating and babysitting.
Does that count? I know Baby Got Back passes the Bechdel test for the conversation in the beginning about a third girl's butt.
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Babysitting definitely doesn't count. And they're only talking about dating because the stepmom wants her to have plans rather than be antisocial.
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From Labyrinth:
MOTHER: SARAH, YOU'RE AN HOUR LATE.
SARAH: I SAID I'M SORRY.
MOTHER: YOUR FATHER AND I GO OUT VERY RARELY.
SARAH: YOU GO OUT EVERY WEEKEND!
MOTHER: I ASK YOU TO BABY-SIT
MOTHER: ONLY IF IT WON'T INTERFERE WITH YOUR PLANS.
SARAH: YOU DON'T EVEN ASK WHAT MY PLANS ARE.
MOTHER: I ASSUME YOU'D TELL ME IF YOU HAD A DATE.
MOTHER: YOU SHOULD HAVE DATES AT YOUR AGE.
FATHER: WE WERE WORRIED ABOUT YOU.
SARAH: I CAN'T DO ANYTHING RIGHT!
The baby in question is a boy. Then they are arguing about dating. Presumably dating boys her age, but it is ambiguous. Also, I forget, does the mother have a name?
I'm not sure if this counts. It's debatable, which is one of the reasons this test is flawed.
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The dad doesn't even have a name. Parents don't matter in movies about teens.
And the gender of the baby is irrelevant.
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But one of the requirements is that they have to be named, right?
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On the notion of shitposting.
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On the notion of shitposting.
How meta of you.
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On the notion of shitposting.
How meta of you.
Is this what you're going to do now?
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But one of the requirements is that they have to be named, right?
Did you even read the 3 requirements in the link you posted?
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http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test
The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added.
don't forget to donate
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Dating is not a man. Babysitting is not a man. Therefore, it passes the test. There are some variants to the test, like adding that the two characters have to be named, or that the conversation needs to last a certain length of time, but I don't like those. The main reason why the test works so well in highlighting gender bias is its incredible simplicity, the fact that it's setting the bar very, very low - and yet so many films fail it anyway. By throwing on little qualifiers and making it more complex, the test becomes less incredibly easy, and so the impact of failing such a test is lessened somewhat.
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Dating is not a man. Babysitting is not a man. Therefore, it passes the test. There are some variants to the test, like adding that the two characters have to be named, or that the conversation needs to last a certain length of time, but I don't like those. The main reason why the test works so well in highlighting gender bias is its incredible simplicity, the fact that it's setting the bar very, very low - and yet so many films fail it anyway. By throwing on little qualifiers and making it more complex, the test becomes less incredibly easy, and so the impact of failing such a test is lessened somewhat.
What about movies where the setting prevents the use of women or other similar situations. Are those movies exempt from the Bechdel test?
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The Bechdel Test was invented as a mostly humorous way to highlight the lack of meaningful female main characters in films by blogger Julie (I think?) Beschdel. As a bar to leap over, having two female named characters discuss something other than boys isn't a particularly high one.
Obviously it isn't a hard and fast rule as Alien and Gravity would fail but quite a few porn films would pass. Some people do ttake it too seriouslybut most feminists realise that it was just a crude tool for pointing out a general problem, rather than a clinical tool to examine the feminist credentials of a film.